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Pat Condell talks about the mosque to be built near ground zero

Except Islam didn't take down the World Trade Center. The Cordoba Institute is in no way responsible for what happened that day, and should not have to carry the baggage.
How Bizarre.
I already answered and yet you post the identical proposition.
And you say "except" to something already covered.

I SAID:
"...No one has suggested this group is terroristic nor is the topic limited to that issue.
Nice try to stop the unforunate facts tho.

Similar issues would come up if Germany planned to build their embassy in Israel next to say, the Yad Vashem Museum.....
OR the Japanese their's, near the entrance to the 'Arizona Memorial' in Pearl Harbor.
Duhgain.
Today's Japanese (or Germans) are in no way responsible for atrocities of WWII, yet building say/ie the Japanese consulate at Pearl Harbor would be a problem especially it it was less than 10 years after the event.
(Shall I use larger fonts next time?)
 
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How Bizarre.
I already answered and yet you post the identical proposition.
And you say "except" to something already covered.

I SAID:
Duhgain.
Today's Japanese (or Germans) are in no way responsible for atrocities of WWII, yet building say/ie the Japanese consulate at Pearl Harbor would be a problem especially it it was less than 10 years after the event.
(Shall I use larger fonts next time?)

I'm aware of what you said. If the Japanese built an embassy near Pearl Harbor that glorified Japanese Imperialism and the attack then that would be distasteful. If Japan built it to foster understanding and overcoming hatred as the NYC mosque is meant to do, then I wouldn't mind. Making people carry the baggage for what others did is dumb.
 
If Japan built it to foster understanding and overcoming hatred as the NYC mosque is meant to do, then I wouldn't mind. Making people carry the baggage for what others did is dumb.

When this thing was first proposed it was a huge mosque with am Islamic community center. Now, after all of the hullabaloo, it's evolved into a community center with a Muslim prayer area. If they really want understanding, why not put in a communal prayer area open to anyone while they're at it? :confused: Once it's built, assuming it is built, who's to say what it will become? But I really have to wonder about the motives of the people who proposed this. They're either insensitive morons or they have an ulterior motive:

Symbolism is... important to Muslims -- and it should be. The problem is, as it relates to the NYC mosque, Muslims tend to build mega-mosques on the site of their conquests. For example, Cordoba House is a reminder that Cordoba was made the capital city of Spain under the Moorish dynasty of the Middle Ages. It was the site of an immense mosque. In Jerusalem, triumphant Muslims built the Al-Aqsa mosque on the Jewish holy site of the Temple Mount. So the possibility that this mosque is being built as a symbol of Islam's bloody conquest over American infidels on 9/11 is very real and that's certainly how it will be viewed by Osama bin Laden and his followers.

It's obviously time for Americans to ask themselves what -- and whose -- symbols should be prominent on Ground Zero. Should it be a monument to Islam? Or a monument to the America that was attacked by Islamic extremists?


Read more: Martinuk: Ground Zero mosque is not the American way
 
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When this thing was first proposed it was a huge mosque with am Islamic community center. Now, after all of the hullabaloo, it's evolved into a community center with a Muslim prayer area. If they really want understanding, why not put in a communal prayer area open to anyone while they're at it? :confused: Once it's built, assuming it is built, who's to say what it will become? But I really have to wonder about the motives of the people who proposed this. They're either insensitive morons or they have an ulterior motive:

It's not non-denominational and still has community outreach; so what? Churches do that all of the time.
 
It's not non-denominational and still has community outreach; so what?

So let them build it somewhere else, because churches don't normally have community outreach under circumstances like this. It goes over about as well as Jews wanting to set up a synagogue for community outreach in some place like Sabra or Shatila.
 
So let them build it somewhere else, because churches don't normally have community outreach under circumstances like this. It goes over about as well as Jews wanting to set up a synagogue for community outreach in some place like Sabra or Shatila.

It's their property.
 
That's nice. Let them put something less politically incendiary on it, like a McDonald's or Burger King.

What gives you or anyone else the right to tell them what to do with it? You and others might find it offensive, but that isn't a reason to ban it. We allow KKK protests and other distasteful things in this country as long as they don't violate the rights of others.
 
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Ok - Now I have an opinion on this issue, took me a while to arrive at one.

I was reading this: (I think the entire link is highly important and relevant but I can't quote it all, here.)

This is the first differentiation of the "lesser jihad", the physical holy war, and the "greater jihad", the inner struggle to submit to God. The greater jihad is further divided into three types of struggle:

1) Jihad of the Heart ( the struggle for moral reformation and faith)

2) Jihad of the Tongue (the struggle to proclaim God's word abroad; right speech)

3) Jihad of the Hand (doing good works in accord with the will of God)

*snip*
When jihad as holy war occurs, it is:

1) Within the context of dar al-islam versus dar al-harb

2) Is the collective duty of the community with specific categories of who should fight and who should perform other duties

3) Before the battle begins, the da'wah (the summons to become Muslim) must be issued

4) Once the fighting does begin, it must be carried out according to strict rules and limits.

I feel that this is what's guiding efforts to educate people on Islam and so forth - the fact that Jihad isn't a "kill all those who disagree with us" - it's a more involved effort to change minds and spread the "gospel"

What complicates this entire thing is that our country is expressly *against* the government choosing a religious side - but when faced with a fight or issue waged in the name of a religion . . . how are we suppose to perceive it and go forward and deal with it? I think this is where our 1st Amendment puts us between a rock and a hard place.

On one hand actions taken to prevent the spread of Islam will be considered a bigoted stance.
On the other hand, how much are we to allow to happen, holding within the 1st Amendment pegs, and without us intervening or drawing a line will ultimately permit things to expand and commence forward into something more involved and profound.
 
What gives you or anyone else the right to tell them what to do with it?

Free speech. I or anyone else might not be able to prevent them from building it, assuming they have all of the necessary zoning approvals and such, but I sure have the right to tell them and everyone else what insensitive buffoons they are.
 
What complicates this entire thing is that our country is expressly *against* the government choosing a religious side - but when faced with a fight or issue waged in the name of a religion . . . how are we suppose to perceive it and go forward and deal with it? I think this is where our 1st Amendment puts us between a rock and a hard place.

I think we need to listen to Thomas Jefferson on this. He wrote in his autobiography concerning Virginia's law on religion:

“The Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom … met with opposition, but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed and a singular proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion [of body and mind] is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the words 'Jesus Christ,' so that it should read, ‘a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion.’ The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to [protect] the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination.”

http://www.jeffersonlegacy.org/education.pdf

The idea was to keep government out of the discussion. Free inquiry was the best defense against what Jefferson called "error":

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. If it be said, his testimony in a court of justice cannot be relied on, reject it then, and be the stigma on him. Constraint may make him worse by making him a hypocrite, but it will never make him a truer man. It may fix him obstinately in his errors, but will not cure them. Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error. Give a loose to them, they will support the true religion, by bringing every false one to their tribunal, to the test of their investigation. They are the natural enemies of error, and of error only. Had not the Roman government permitted free enquiry, Christianity could never have been introduced. Had not free enquiry been indulged, at the aera of the reformation, the corruptions of Christianity could not have been purged away. If it be restrained now, the present corruptions will be protected, and new ones encouraged. Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now. Thus in France the emetic was once forbidden as a medicine, and the potatoe as an article of food. Government is just as infallible too when it fixes systems in physics. Galileo was sent to the inquisition for affirming that the earth was a sphere: the government had declared it to be as flat as a trencher, and Galileo was obliged to abjure his error. This error however at length prevailed, the earth became a globe, and Descartes declared it was whirled round its axis by a vorteo. The government in which he lived was wise enough to see that this was no question of civil jurisdiction, or we should all have been involved by authority in vortices. In fact, the vortices have been exploded, and the Newtonian principle of gravitation is now more firmly established, on the basis of reason, than it would be were the government to step in, and to make it an article of necessary faith. Reason and experiment have been indulged, and error has fled before them. It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.

Notes on the State of Virginia
 
I feel that this is what's guiding efforts to educate people on Islam and so forth - the fact that Jihad isn't a "kill all those who disagree with us" - it's a more involved effort to change minds and spread the "gospel"

.


Except, as it so happens, the practice of erecting large monuments at the strategic sites of those vanquished is a long standing tradition among Islamic supremacists. What they call "The Dome of the Rock", for instance, was erected upon the temple mount of the destroyed Jewish temple in Jerusalem.
 
Except, as it so happens, the practice of erecting large monuments at the strategic sites of those vanquished is a long standing tradition among Islamic supremacists. What they call "The Dome of the Rock", for instance, was erected upon the temple mount of the destroyed Jewish temple in Jerusalem.

So maybe we can get the Jews to put up a huge synagogue next door, or talk Jimmy Dean into putting up a museum dedicated to sausage.
 
Free speech. I or anyone else might not be able to prevent them from building it, assuming they have all of the necessary zoning approvals and such, but I sure have the right to tell them and everyone else what insensitive buffoons they are.

And I'm allowed to disagree with you, and by "telling them what to do" implies force btw.
 
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Except Islam didn't take down the World Trade Center. The Cordoba Institute is in no way responsible for what happened that day, and should not have to carry the baggage.

no, they are not responsible. too bad, so sad. it makes me sick to think of a mosque being built on that site and the group should never have even thought to build there.
 
And I'm allowed to disagree with you, and by "telling them what to do" implies force btw.

Can you explain how saying the center would be better suited somewhere else implies force? :confused: Personally, I'm really more interested in a dialogue. They can explain to the survivors and families of 9/11 how this initiative advances understanding and respect. (I was kidding about the sausage museum, btw. I'm a strong advocate of civility.)
 
Can you explain how saying the center would be better suited somewhere else implies force? :confused:
Sorry, but this quote makes it look like you didn't want to allow them to build there.
So let them build it somewhere else...

Personally, I'm really more interested in a dialogue. They can explain to the survivors and families of 9/11 how this initiative advances understanding and respect. (I was kidding about the sausage museum, btw. I'm a strong advocate of civility.)

I dunno, teach people more about Islam, and how it's not just a bunch of people running around and blowing themselves us.
 
Interesting. Since you've decided to play that card...how many Christians do you think have died for no other reason than their faith?

Christians, of course speaking of the past here, weren't ones to die for their faith but were more than glad to kill for their faith. What's happening with Muslims today is that some are taking the Koran literally, to the extreme also. I mean fundamentalist Christians will completely ignore all the bad stuff the Bible says and act like it isn't there but fundamentalist Muslims embrace the evil things in the Koran. Fundamentalists ruin everything :(
 
Sorry, but this quote makes it look like you didn't want to allow them to build there.

Mea culpa. Let's put it this way. If there were a legal way to prevent them from locating that mosque where it is, I would probably do it, just as I would prevent a developer from putting a shopping center or theme park next to a Civil War battlefield. Americans assume a collective ownership of the symbols that define their country. In my opinion, Ground Zero is one such site.

I dunno, teach people more about Islam, and how it's not just a bunch of people running around and blowing themselves us.

I'm interested in the background and motivations of the people behind this project, in particular Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf. I understand his father was a contemporary of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna and taught at Al-Azhar University until he was forced to flee Egypt in 1948. Now, I don't want to punish the son for the alleged sins of the father, but the more I dig the more questions I have:

On May 25, 2010, Abdul Rauf wrote an article for the New York Daily News insisting:

My colleagues and I are the anti-terrorists. We are the people who want to embolden the vast majority of Muslims who hate terrorism to stand up to the radical rhetoric. Our purpose is to interweave America’s Muslim population into the mainstream society. [emphasis added]

Oh, really?

Only two months before, on March 24, 2010, Abdul Rauf is quoted in an article in Arabic for the website Rights4All entitled “The Most Prominent Imam in New York: ‘I Do Not Believe in Religious Dialogue.’

Yes, you read that correctly and, yes, that is an accurate translation of Abdul Rauf. And Right4All is not an obscure blog, but the website of the media department of Cairo University, the leading educational institution of the Arabic-speaking world.

In the article, the imam said the following of the “religious dialogue” and “interweaving into the mainstream society” that he so solemnly seems to advocate in the Daily News and elsewhere:

This phrase is inaccurate. Religious dialogue as customarily understood is a set of events with discussions in large hotels that result in nothing. Religions do not dialogue and dialogue is not present in the attitudes of the followers, regardless of being Muslim or Christian. The image of Muslims in the West is complex which needs to be remedied.

But that was two months ago. More recently — in fact on May 26, one day after his Daily News column – Abdul Rauf appeared on the popular Islamic website Hadiyul-Islam with even more disturbing opinions. That’s the same website where, ironically enough, a fatwa was simultaneously being issued forbidding a Muslim to sell land to a Christian, because the Christian wanted to build a church on it.

In his interview on Hadiyul-Islam by Sa’da Abdul Maksoud, Abdul Rauf was asked his views on Sharia (Islamic religious law) and the Islamic state. He responded:

Throughout my discussions with contemporary Muslim theologians, it is clear an Islamic state can be established in more than just a single form or mold. It can be established through a kingdom or a democracy. The important issue is to establish the general fundamentals of Sharia that are required to govern. It is known that there are sets of standards that are accepted by [Muslim] scholars to organize the relationships between government and the governed. [emphasis added]

When questioned about this, Abdul Rauf continued: “Current governments are unjust and do not follow Islamic laws.” He added:

New laws were permitted after the death of Muhammad, so long of course that these laws do not contradict the Quran or the Deeds of Muhammad … so they create institutions that assure no conflicts with Sharia. [emphasis in translation]

In yet plainer English, forget the separation of church and state. Abdul Rauf’s goal is the imposition of Shariah law — in every country, even democratic ones like the U.S.

Pajamas Media » Ground Zero Imam: ‘I Don’t Believe in Religious Dialogue’
 
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Christians, of course speaking of the past here, weren't ones to die for their faith but were more than glad to kill for their faith.

So where do the Chrstians who were fed to lions and used to line roads by the Romans fit into your assessment?
 
If I see evidence of an ulterior motive, I'll be angry, but so far I haven't really.
 
So where do the Chrstians who were fed to lions and used to line roads by the Romans fit into your assessment?

Is your screen name a dialect pronouciation of "Oliver" - such as in Green Acres?

None the less - I believe his exact point was that Christians *use* to be very 'radical' but mostly they've calmed down and mellowed out - with a few on the fringe still being radical.
 
Let's put the shoe on the other foot.

A radical Christian group destroys a building in the ME, say for example, in Saudi Arabia, or Iran, or anywhere else, killing a few thousand innocent people. Later, they want to build a huge Christian church on the site, and open it on the anniversary of the atrocity.

How many think that the Muslims would allow this to happen? Anyone, anyone?

Sure, they'd say that the Christian group that carried out the attack didn't represent all Christians, was in fact a perversion of the religion, and that tolerance is a good thing.

Sure, they would.
 
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